Appassionato

I am writing a story. I am inviting you to be in it.

Categorised as Literature, Miscellaneous & tagged with fun, gaming, interactive, writing.

Despite all the ranting about losing my creative juices, I figured that trying to revive them while there are remnants is better than waiting till there are none left.

I have written stories before. But they were all mystery thriller psy­cho­pathic ones that made me freak out so bad I couldn’t muster the courage to walk over to my bed to sleep. So for a change, this time it’s a fantasy.

1. I love World of Warcraft, but I can’t stand most of the people who played.
2. I have a hidden knack in drawing and designing fantasy ancient-style Tolkien-style maps.
3. Always wanted to write a love story involving myself.

But, it’s not going to be a love story, it’s not a fan­fic­tion, it’s not going to be a copy of anything, it’s going to be original (or as original as what I have in my head).

So here’s my invit­a­tion to you: Would you like to be a character in it? And here is some info to help you decide. Read more…

One blog post for the past year

Categorised as Design, Personal, Romance, School, Site-Related & tagged with gaming, Internet, maplestory, relationships, uni, wow.

In the last post, I said that the business card design was the first step in getting to this version 20 design. Guess what? I lied. I almost forgot that I had ever designed what I should now refer to as Appas­sionato Version 19.5. Indeed, this is the reason I once blamed Sheng Han for using a header back­ground image similar to mine:

Appas­sionato Version 19.5 (Click above image to see the live version)

All my guy friends thought this was the best design I’ve ever came up with, totally un-Rilla style, and it’s actually the first photo manip­u­la­tion I’ve done. Reasons why I didn’t go through with it:

• It looked perfect on my 1024 x 768 screen, but when I switched to a laptop with 1280 x 800 screen I realised that it was too small.
• The file size of all the images was too big for a blog.
• No one ever notices my favourite part of the design: the hanging wire aka “skip to footer” link.

Main crux of this blog post however: summary of the past year of my life.
Read more…

Gaming addiction

Categorised as Miscellaneous & tagged with gaming, holiday, maplestory, pokemon.

Since I have a design block and a bit of a writing block now, I find myself bored from time to time. So firstly, I got myself back into Pokemon Ruby and now I’m offi­cially back into MapleStory. Seriously, ouch.

I loved Pokemon when I was little and I still find it great. I was stuck halfway in Ruby a couple of years ago and never broke through it. But now, it’s just all fun again – recol­lect­ing childhood times. Who here has never played Pokemon before? You need to get off the Internet and get into it!

I sigh at the thought of MapleStory. I got married in the game this February to a great guy. After he and many friends quit, the addiction gradually brushed off and I have not touched it until this month. Now what? It’s holiday time again and almost everyone is back into it, including him. (What can I say? A wife has to follow her husband!) So I logged on to say hi but I… couldn’t get my bum off it. From the sweet girl in February to the gothic bum in December…

February vs December MapleStory look

This is why you shouldn’t start any MMORPQ games like MapleStory and if you ever do, don’t get married.

To counter my addiction, I’m going to set up a daily holiday timetable to ensure I also do other things I enjoy: reading, writing and chatting. I am not going to let myself get into that mega 11am-1am game routine like the previous summer. I have to admit that was great fun though. But how do you battle addictions?